How do you take your tea – with milk perhaps, or sugar? How about with a thick layer of salted cream cheese?
It sounds ridiculous but cheese tea is tipped as one of the big food trends of 2019, according to the New York Times which dubbed it “the thing you will try against your better judgment”.
First concocted in the famed night markets of Taiwan, cheese tea is a cold tea, usually green or black, topped with a thick layer of salted cheese cream foam.
Over the last 12 months, Asian cheese tea franchise Happy Lemon has opened stores in Melbourne and Sydney, bubble tea multinationals such as Gong Cha and Chatime have promoted the cheese teas on their menus, and now many local stores have also launched to meet the new demand, such as Gotcha, TMix and Teaser, to name but three.
At first glance, it looks like a layered thick shake: iced teas in flavours ranging from mango to durian to green tea at the bottom of the cup, and a thick white plug of foamy cream cheese on the top.
You’re supposed to take a sip of the cheesy foam, which has a texture like melted icecream and a salty tang. Then you use the straw to drink the tea at the bottom of the cup, the mild, sweet flavour providing a pleasant contrast.
Gotcha, which opened just over a year ago in Elizabeth Street in Melbourne’s CBD, has several cheese tea options on the menu, in order to stand out in the now-crowded cheese tea market.
Gotcha Tea also offers salted egg cheese tea, with the yolk blended into the cheese tea, and tiramisu-flavoured cheese tea.
Store representative Joeyn Loo estimates that the cheese tea trend started last year when bubble tea stores started searching for new and creative ways to stand out.
Gotcha’s cheese teas are particularly popular with their Chinese customers. “For the Chinese customers, they always like the cheese foam, because for them the tea is sweet and the cheese is salty so it complements the sweetness,” said Orlando Sanpo, the store’s Business Development Manager.
Ms Loo says that Western customers are taking a bit longer to embrace the trend. “At first they think it’s a bit weird – like, cheese on tea? Doesn’t match? – but once they drink it, they really love it.”
Fans of cheese tea say that it’s the balance of sweet and salty flavours that attracts them to the drink.
Customer Silvia Lin, 21, says the cheese topping makes a tea drink more interesting.
In addition, she says, “the tea is refreshing, while the cream cheese is heaver. So combined together they balance the drink.”
It’s not brand new – the Sharetea bubble tea franchise, among others, has been serving cheese tea in Australia since 2013.
It has always been quite popular with customers from Asian backgrounds, according to brand representative Salina Hainzl, but it’s only in the last year or so that it has gone mainstream.
Ms Hainzl believes that the appeal is partially due to the increased popularity of bubble tea itself. In addition, she says, in Asia, cream cheese has become more popular in desserts, which kicked off the trend globally.
“For any item to pick up and gain mass momentum it can often take a bit of time,” she says. “I mean the whole idea of [bubble tea], some people still feel a bit iffy about it, but as we become more multicultural, they become things people get used to.”
Source: The Sidney Morning Herald
